Alex Cross 16 (16 page)

Yarrow perched on the edge of a huge cherry inlaid desk and made a point of not asking me to sit down. I'd known I was going to have to be aggressive at first, but now I wanted to back off and see what I could accomplish with a little tact. If Yarrow chose to put up a firewall, it would be hard to get around without subpoenas.

"Senator, let me start by taking any association you may have with that social club off the table. It's not why I'm here," I told him. That wasn't entirely true, but it was good enough for the time being.

"I never said I was associated with any club," he said. It was a balls-of-steel moment on his part, especially considering the sex acts I'd seen him performing on more than one of Nicholson's tapes. I didn't push it. "Fair enough, but you should know that my focus here is extortion, not solicitation."

"Please don't push your way in here doling out some puzzle pieces and holding onto others, Detective," Yarrow said, suddenly more aggressive. "I'm too smart and too busy a man for that. What
exactly
are you hoping to walk away with here?"

"Good question, and I have an answer. I want you to tell me that those bank transfers are exactly what I think they are."

There was a long standoff; I guess he was waiting for me to blink.

Then he finally said, "Yeah, okay, let's get this out on the table. I've been to Blacksmith Farms, but for entertainment purposes only. And I
don't
mean myself. We're talking about out-of-town guests, contributors, visitors from the Middle East, that sort of thing. It's a part of the job, unfortunately.

"I get them in, have a drink or two, and then leave them to it. That's it. Believe me" — he held up his left hand page 63

and waggled a gold-banded finger — "I can no sooner afford to piss Barbara off than I can my whole constituency. There's been no solicitation here. Nothing to be blackmailed for. Am I clear on that?" I was starting to get real sick of people pretending that none of this was happening.

"I'm sorry, Senator, but I have evidence to the contrary. Digital video evidence. You sure this is the way you want to go?"

Senator Yarrow never missed a beat, and he even remembered to pick up the file he'd supposedly forgotten in the office.

"You know, Detective, my caucus meeting started five minutes ago, and if I don't get this important water bill moving today, it's not going anywhere. Assuming there aren't any charges here, you're going to have to excuse me."

"How long is your meeting?" I asked.

He flipped a card from his pocket and held it out between two fingers for me. "Give Grace a call. We'll get you on the schedule," he said.

I could feel the firewall starting to rise, higher and higher, faster and faster.

I let it play quietly on Bree's laptop while we visited.

The jazz singers' weren't the only familiar voices in the room. I'd also brought along Jannie and Ali. This was the first night the nurses had allowed Ali into the room. He was so quiet and respectful, sitting right next to Nana's bed. Such a good little boy.

"What's this for, Daddah?" he asked in the younger-sounding voice he used when he was a little nervous and unsure of himself.

"That's the heart monitor. You see those lines? They show Nana's heartbeat. You can see that it's steady right now."

"What about that tube there?"

"That's how Nana gets food while she's in the coma."

Then, suddenly, he said, "I wish Nana was coming home soon. I wish it more than anything. I say prayers for Nana all day long."

"You can tell her yourself, Ali. Nana's right here. Go ahead, if you want to say something."

"She can hear me?"

"She probably can. I think so." I put his hand on Nana's and my hand on top of his. "Go ahead."

"Hi, Nana!" he said as if Nana were hard of hearing, and it was difficult not to laugh.

"Inside-the-house voice, buddy," Bree said. "But good enthusiasm there. I'll bet Nana heard you."

"Come here, Janelle. I want to show you and Ali something interesting." Ali hung on my arm, and Jannie came to look over my shoulder. It was tight in the little space next to the bed, but I liked us pressed in that way, a unit, hopefully ready for whatever came our way. I took a picture out of my wallet. It was the one I'd found in Caroline's apartment, and I'd been carrying it with me.

"Now, this is Nana Mama, your uncle Blake, and me. Way back in 1976, if you can believe it."

"Daddy! You look ridiculous," Jannie said, pointing at the red, white, and blue hat jammed onto my seventies Afro. "What are you
wearing
?"

"It's called a boater. It was the Bicentennial, America's two hundredth birthday, and about a million people page 64

were wearing them that day. Very few looked so jaunty, though."

"Oh, that's really too bad." Jannie sounded somewhere between embarrassed and filled with pity for her poor, clueless father.

"Anyway," I went on, "about five minutes after this picture was taken, a big Washington Redskins float came by in the parade. They were throwing out mini footballs, and Blake and I just about lost our minds trying to catch one. We ran after the float for blocks without even a second thought for poor Nana Mama. So you know what happened next, right?"

This was mostly for the kids, but also for Nana — like we were sitting around the kitchen table and she was over at the stove, eavesdropping. I could just imagine her standing there, stirring something good and pretending not to listen in, getting a wisecrack ready for me.

"It took her hours to find us, and let me tell you, when she did, you have never seen Nana that mad in all your life. Not even close."

"Ali stared at Nana, trying to imagine it. "How mad was she? Tell me."

"Well, do you remember when she quit us and moved out for a while?"

"Yeah."

"Madder than that, even. And remember when a certain someone" — I poked Ali in the ribs — "'drove' the vacuum cleaner down the stairs and put scratches all over the wood?" He played along and dropped his jaw wide open. "Madder than that?"

"Ten times madder, little man."

"What happened, Daddy?" Jannie chimed in.

The truth was, Nana had slapped both of us across the face — before she hugged us silly and then bought us a couple of red, white, and blue cotton candies, as big as our haircuts, on the way home. She'd always been a little old-school that way, at least back then. Not that I ever held the occasional whupping against her. That's just the way it was in those days. Tough love, but it seemed to work on me.

I picked up her hand and looked at her, so frail and still in the bed, like some kind of place marker for the woman I'd known for so long and loved so dearly, possibly since before I could remember.

"You made sure we never ran off like that again, didn't you, Regina?" Two seconds ago, I'd been making jokes. Now I was feeling overwhelmed, and if I had to guess, I'd say I was feeling a lot of the same emotions Nana had that day on the Mall before she found Blake and me, safe and sound.

I was scared and I was desperate, most likely because I was exhausted from fighting back all the worst-case scenarios in my head. More than anything, I wanted our family to be back together, the way it was supposed to be, the way it had always been.

But I doubted it was going to happen, and I couldn't really face that yet, or maybe ever.
Stay with us, Nana
.

Starting at eight, I sent out five teams of two uniformed officers each, to pull in as many from the list of escorts as we could find.

Presumably these were night birds we were going after. First thing in the morning seemed like a good bet. I wanted to talk to as many of them as possible, before any cross talk could start mucking things up and making this investigation even trickier than it was already.

Sampson also called in a favor from our friend Mary Ann Pontano in the Prostitution Enforcement Unit. She arranged for us to use the office they shared with Narcotics on Third Street, and Mary Ann would also be sitting in for at least some of the interviews. I wanted a white female face on our side of the table, to go against the mostly white female prostitutes.

By ten o'clock, we had an impressive fifteen of the twenty-two names accounted for. I spread them out into every conference room, interview space, cubicle, and hallway available, and I don't think I made any new friends in Narcotics that morning. Too bad. I didn't much care that I might be page 65

inconveniencing somebody.

The place was a total zoo, including the four extra officers I kept around to make sure nobody walked out on us. The rest of the team I sent back out to look for the escorts who hadn't turned up. The possibility that some of them might never be found was something I'd have to worry about later.

The interviews started slowly. None of these very pretty women trusted us, and I couldn't blame them much for that. We didn't hold back on details of Caroline's murder, or the possibility of others. I wanted the young women to realize the kind of danger they'd been in, working for Nicholson, working for anyone in the escort business. Anything to get them to talk to us.

A few of the women quickly admitted to recognizing Caroline's picture. She'd gone by the name Nicole when she was at the club, which wasn't often from the sound of it. She was "nice." She was "quiet." In other words, they told me nothing I could use to find her murderer.

Instead of lunch, I took a walk around the block to clear my head, but it didn't help much. Was I wasting my time here? Were we asking the wrong questions? Or should we just let the escorts go and try to salvage the afternoon for something else?

This was the classic problem for me: I never knew when to stop, because stopping always felt like quitting. And I wasn't ready for that yet. For one thing, I still vividly remembered Caroline's "remains." I feared there were several others who'd died the same horrible way.

I was on my way back up Third Street, feeling no better than before, when my phone rang. Mary Ann Pontano's name was on the ID.

"I'm outside," I answered. "Trying to clear my head — if that's possible. Taking a walk."

"Only place I didn't look," she said. "You should get back in here and talk to this girl Lauren again." I started walking faster. "Red hair, shearling coat?"

"That's the one, Alex. Seems like her memory's warming up. She's got a few interesting things to say about one of the missing girls, Katherine Tennancour."

"Katherine's dead, isn't she?" That was the first thing Lauren asked when I sat down with her. "Nobody will tell me anything. You want
us
to talk, but you people won't say a word about what happened."

"That's because we don't know, Lauren. That's why we're talking to you."

"Okay, but what do you
think?
I don't mean to be morbid. I just want to know. She was a friend of mine, another Florida girl. She was going to be a lawyer. She'd been accepted at Stetson, which is a really good school."

Lauren played with a paper napkin the whole time she spoke, tearing it into tiny pieces. A slice of the pizza we'd brought in sat untouched on a plate next to the torn shreds of napkin. I believed that all she wanted to hear was the truth. So I decided to give it to her.

"The police report says there's no indication that she packed a bag at her apartment. Given the amount of time it's been — yes, there's a good chance she's not coming back."

"Oh, God." The girl turned away, fighting tears, hugging herself tightly. It was getting more depressing in here by the second. We were in one of the larger interview rooms, with graffiti burning right through the latest paint job on the walls and scorch marks on the floor from years of cigarette butts.

"Detective Pontano says that you mentioned something about a specific client at Blacksmith? And maybe Katherine. Lauren, tell me about the client."

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe. I mean — I know what Katherine told me. But that place was all rumors all the time."

I kept my voice even and as calming as possible. "What did she tell you, Lauren? We're not going to arrest you for anything you say in here. You can believe me on that. This is a big homicide case. I don't give a damn about vice."

page 66

"She said she had a private scheduled with someone, a big hitter she called Zeus. That was the last time I ever talked to Katherine."

I wrote it down.
Zeus?

"Is that some kind of alias? Or was it Katherine's code for the client?" She dabbed at her eyes. "An alias. Almost everyone uses booking names. You know — Mr. Shakespeare, Pigskin, Dirty Harry, whatever strikes their fancy. It's not like you don't end up face-to-face. But it does mean nobody's real name gets written down anywhere. Believe me, it's safer for everybody that way."

"Sure it is." I nodded. "So Lauren, do you know who Zeus is? Any idea?"

"I don't know. Honestly. This is what I'm saying, trying to say.
Supposedly,
he had something to do with the government, but Katherine could be gullible that way. I didn't even think twice about it when she told me." My mind was racing ahead a little now. "Gullible how? Can you expand on that for me? What do you mean?" Lauren sat back and pushed both hands through her hair, away from her face. I think finally talking about Katherine was a relief for her — if not for me.

"This is the thing you need to understand," she said, and leaned in closer. "Clients lie about what they do all the time. Like, if you think they're more important than they really are, you'll work harder, or let them go bareback or whatever crazy shit it is they're fantasizing about. So I never believe half of what I hear. In fact, I just assume that the ones who talk about their lives
are
lying. The men with the real power? Those are the ones who keep it all to themselves."

"And Zeus?"

"Honestly, I don't even know if he exists. It's just a name. The name of a Greek god, right?
Greek?
Maybe that's a clue? His sexual preference?"